Pre-storm calm?

Barack Obama had a pretty bad month inside the Beltway, with Republicans on the warpath over multiple scandals. Outside Washington, Obama didn't have too bad a month at all, as his job approval ratings barely budged. While this calm may seem to indicate that the public has a much higher tolerance for what constitutes a "scandal" than congressional Republicans, there were indications at the end of the month that this may just be a calm before much stormier poll numbers for the president. But first, let's look back on last month. Here's the chart:

[Click on graph to see larger-scale version.]

May, 2013

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If that title drew you in, I have to warn you up front that the ranting contest suggestion is at the very bottom of this article, so feel free to just scroll down to it if that's all you're here for. Full disclosure, and all of that -- I just didn't have any better title for this weekly wrapup, sorry. Enough navel-gazing, though, let's get on with it.

Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper signed into law this week the first regulations setting up a legal recreational marijuana market since the Drug War began. This marks a historic milestone (legal weed won't actually become reality until next year), but even though it is now seven months from when the state's voters approved the idea, there is still no word from the Justice Department on how the disparity between the state's new laws and federal laws will be handled by the feds. I guess Eric Holder's got other things to do, or something. Maybe he just "spaced out" on the whole thing, who knows?

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Michele Bachmann has announced her retirement from Congress. I consider this good news for a very selfish reason: her name is just too easy to misspell. You're typing along, and where there should be a double letter there isn't... and then a little later there is one where there shouldn't be. It's annoying.

But that's just one man's opinion -- one man who has enough problems typing politicians' names correctly, and (one might point out, in all honesty) one man who really doesn't have a leg to stand on when complaining about difficult-to-spell last names. Ahem.

I'm sorry... where were we? Oh, right, Michele Bachmann... annoying... got it.

OK, I guess this column's going to be a little loopy today, as I join in the rampant and gleeful schadenfreude across the Lefto-blogo-sphere. Call it Bachmannenfreude, I guess.

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Attorney General Eric Holder is reportedly meeting with members of the press, to hear what they had to say about the Justice Department's actions towards the Associated Press and a Fox News reporter. Apparently, my invitation to this meeting got lost in the mail (perhaps it is in my "Spam" folder, I'll admit I didn't check...), so allow me to use the format of this column to say what I would have said to Eric Holder had I met with him.

Mister Attorney General, the reason I have such a problem with issuing warrants or subpoenas for news reporters is because I am aware of the history of the laws being used to do so. I have a hard time believing that you or your boss (a former constitutional professor) are completely unaware of these precedents in American history, but I haven't heard anyone else mentioning them, so I thought it fell to me to bring them up.

The Espionage Act of 1917 wasn't the first time the federal government decided to criminally target people who had the audacity to publish writings critical of those in power. That infamy belongs to the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. The "sedition" part was directly targeted at newspaper editors who disagreed with the ruling Federalists, at the time. Benjamin Franklin's grandson, Benjamin Franklin Bache, was specifically targeted for his Philadelphia paper the Aurora (Philly was the nation's capital at the time). He died of yellow fever before he could be convicted of sedition, but other Antifederalist publishers did spend time in jail for the "crime" of criticizing the government. A sitting member of Congress who also published a newspaper, Matthew Lyon, was jailed for sedition during this time period, and he subsequently won re-election to his House seat while he was in prison.

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In one of their stunning (but regular) "up is down" leaps of illogic, the Republican Party is charging President Obama with "court-packing." In reality, they're just miffed that a Democrat is going to exercise his constitutional authority to appoint judges in the regular order of things. To call such actions "court-packing" is nothing short of laughable, to be blunt. In fact, the only hinkey business afoot is coming from Republicans themselves on the issue.

Let's "unpack" the situation a bit, shall we? The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is the most important appellate court in the country, for two reasons. The first is that it is seen as a sort of minor-league farm team from which presidents (from both parties) routinely choose Supreme Court justices. The second reason is the really important one, however -- this is the appeals court where many cases which are on the fast track to the Supreme Court normally get decided. Meaning the political makeup of such a court is more important than other circuit courts.

The court is supposed to have eleven judges on it. It currently has eight. President Obama is rumored to be about to announce three nominations to fill the three vacancies. He finally got one of his nominees, Sri Srinivasan, approved last week by the Senate. But there are three more vacancies to fill, and the Constitution allows whoever is president to name replacements. Much to Republicans' dismay.

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[Program Note: Hope everyone's enjoying their Memorial Day! This column ran back in 2009, but I thought it would be appropriate to run here today, which is another way of saying I was having too much fun to write a new column. Anyway, enjoy, and hope everyone had a good holiday weekend.]

This column originally ran May 25, 2009

On a lonely hill outside the small town of Cobh, Ireland (pronounced: "cove"), is a mass grave marked by three somber headstones. As mass graves go, it's a fairly small one; holding not tens of thousands or even thousands, but merely a few hundred bodies. But the relative size of the grave on the scale of human misery is beside the point -- because while few, their deaths had monumental consequences for America. The dead were civilians, not soldiers (more on them in a minute). But their deaths deserve memorializing today just as much as those we remember who wore the uniform of our country. Because this is the final resting place of the people onboard the Lusitania.

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Some weeks, not much happens in political news, and other weeks it seems like almost too much happens. This was one of the latter types of week.

While last week was a week of scandals on the television news, this week most of them faded into the background a bit. Benghazi, of course, is going to be Republicans' backup "scandal" right through the 2016 election, since they're not even really targeting Barack Obama anymore, but rather Hillary Clinton. The IRS scandal was briefly in the news as one woman refused to answer Congress' questions and then was put on administrative leave. But the scandal still hasn't touched the White House in any meaningful way, so it appears Republicans are somewhat losing interest in it, other than as a dandy way to raise campaign cash from their base, of course. The AP and Fox News scandal actually did get more scandalous this week, but Republicans aren't really interested in pushing this scandal, leaving it up to the media to protect one of their own.

President Obama gave a major speech yesterday, the timing of which was assumably chosen to "pivot" off of all the scandals (and the non-scandals). He spoke on foreign policy, war, drones, and Guantanamo Bay. This was enough to enrage a few Republicans, which meant it certainly worked as a political distraction. It was also enough to enrage the co-founder of Code Pink, who made her displeasure known while Obama was trying to speak.

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Boy Scouts, traditionally, have been associated with the tying of knots. Knot-tying has always been a part of scouting, and even today just about any Boy Scout would be able to tell you the difference between a square knot and a granny knot. But today, the Boy Scouts seem to be attempting to unravel a Gordian knot, instead.

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A comprehensive immigration reform bill has been approved by the Senate committee responsible for immigration laws, and the bill will now move to the Senate floor. This is good news for people who want to see immigration reform, obviously, but the bill’s still got quite a ways to go before it reaches President Obama’s desk for his signature. There are, in fact, six more hurdles the bill will likely face, and some of them are dauntingly high.

The next step will take place on the Senate floor. If the Senate approves a bill, the House will likely have both a committee vote and a floor vote on a bill. But nobody expects the House to vote on the Senate bill the first time around, meaning what the two houses pass will be different. This leads to the next hurdle, the conference committee composed of members of the House and Senate. They will have to hammer out some deal, and then both houses get to vote one last time on the finished product. That's a lot of hurdles to clear, and there is no guarantee that any bill will wind up on Obama's desk any time soon.

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I hesitate to even write this column, because the disaster in Oklahoma is so fresh. And I will start by admitting my own complete ignorance on the subject at hand. This isn't a political column out to score points, and it should not be read in any way as insensitive to the victims of natural disaster.

But when viewing the wreckage of the Oklahoma tornado I am struck by the same question that always comes to mind when seeing post-tornado footage on the news: Where are the storm cellars? This question, in slightly different form, also springs to mind when watching people board up their windows with plywood in anticipation of a hurricane: Where are the storm shutters? Why, in places prone to such disasters, don't the building codes specify such things, as prudent preparation for Mother Nature's wrath?

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